Company claims stone DVDs last 1,000 years

Company claims stone DVDs last 1,000 years

http://news.techworld.com/green-it/3206317/company-claims-stone-dvds-last-1000-years/

If you really, really need to make sure those precious photos of yours last virtually forever - or at least longer than the average two- to five-year lifespan of consumer grade DVDs, then startup Cranberry has the answer for you: a DVD that literally lasts a millennium.

Cranberry's DiamonDisc product holds a standard 4.7GB of data, which roughly amounts to 2,000 photos, or 1,200 songs, or three hours of video, but the media is unharmed by heat as high as 176 degrees Fahrenheit, ultraviolet rays or normal material deterioration, according to the company. DiamonDiscs contain no dye layers, adhesive layers or reflective materials that could deteriorate.

While only future generations may be able to prove DiamonDisc can last 1,000 years, never mind that DVD players will probably have been long forgotten by then, Cranberry claims its technology has been proved by researchers using the ECMA-379 temperature and humidity testing standards to outlast the durability of competitors that claim a 300-year shelf life.

The company this week announced their product, which it says uses the same format as standard DVDs to store data. However, instead of a silver or gold reflective surface, its disc is transparent, with no reflective layer.

According to the company, unlike standard recordable DVDs which use a 650 nanometer wavelength laser diode to etch a small pit into a disc's media surface, the DiamonDisc uses a higher intensity laser to more deeply etch data into the "diamond-like" surface of its synthetic stone disc.

The DiamonDisc technology was invented by researchers at Brigham Young University and was first brought to market by Millenniata.

While Millenniata performs the R&D on the product, Cranberry does the sales and marketing. The company is in talks with the US government and the military, which are looking for archival media.

"For the military, there's no heat, light, magnetic waves or environmental abuse that will have an impact on these discs," said Joe Beaulaurier, Cranberry's chief marketing officer. The company is also working on developing a Blu-ray version of their DVD product, Beaulaurier said.

 

Pretty cool, but what does this have to do with anything at all?

 

It's a very useful computer accessory? Museums and archives are looking for ways to store electronic records, and this is a promising product. We are seeing more official records and correspondence in electronic formats, and family photographic collections coming to museums in the next few years will have more digital content. A long-term storage option will be necessary as more information only comes in digital versions.

 

but the real point will become .... the disks may last but what will we read them with? ... its hard enough finding an 8 track player after 30 years let alone 300

 

I can see all those tax returns burnt as we speak

 

How does this impact environmental degradeability? Though there is always a need for extension of data, 1000 years is quite long and if "environmental abuse" cannot degrade it, even after 1000 years, it would be a negative impact to the environment.

 

I take it this is serious and not a marketing gimmick, however I'm like the other posters and find it hard to believe we will have DVD players that will last the next thousand years.

 

In a 1000 years , you will not need a dvd player , you will just scan the dvd and the data will taken into you computer.

 

Begging the question, but will we still be able to scan said dvd and will we still be on computers in a thousand years?

 

In a thousand years, they won't even know what a DVD is...

 

I bet if I was to show a bunch of new techno geeks old VAX punch cards from 35 years ago all I would get is a blank stare. Media storage shrinks in size and expands in capacity quite regularly. I can not see that trend changing for some time now, especially with even things like holographic data storage already in the works. I can't forsee having one type of data fro long periods of time, we will be continually updating our formats and moving data from one medium to the next.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_data_storage

lets see what happens in 20 years let alone 200

 

Unless humans have regressed to primitive level due to some disaster, people are reading writings made by the Egyptians well over 3000 years ago.

 

Do you speak Egyptian? Do you know what they called the thing they wrote on? I sure as heck don't. I know their writing is deemed hieroglyphics now but I'm pretty sure that the Egyptians didn't have that word then.

 

Actually, they would still have DVD players....

Museums and collectors of "classic" things will still have them. Then they would probably charge you a fee to see whats on your family disc.

 

Wait, what? If current discs can't last but a few years, this necessitates the purchase of more discs to replace them. This thereby adds to the negative impact to the environment you speak of. With these new discs that can last hundreds of years, there's no need to buy new (read replacement) discs if they, for all intents and purposes, last forever.

 

Horrible example. Archeologists didn't reverse engineer hieroglyphics, they learned how to read them thanks to the Rosetta Stone, which in computing terms would essentially be the hieroglyph protocol's manual. And for other ancient languages like Linear A where there's no Rosetta Stone to work with, researchers still haven't been able to decipher writings made in that language.

So by that logic, unless if the civilization on Earth in year 3000 still has the original DVD Forum/Alliance specifications/manuals on how to read a DVD, they'll likely never be able to figure out how to interpret the pits and lands on a DVD in a meaningful way.